Writes Iowa Girl of Woodbury: Yes, Dragonslayer of Oakdale [BB, 3/19/2014], ‘idiot strings’ are still in use. At least they have been in our family!

“My now-grown daughter has been a mitten and glove loser for her entire life. If you meet her on the street, odds are that she is wearing unmatched gloves, because that is all she has left.

“Until she graduated from college, she had me crochet strings for her mittens so that she wouldn’t lose them. Her friends laughed, but she had both mittens.

“When I saw her recently, I noticed that she was back to wearing mismatched gloves. I jokingly told her that maybe some new mitten strings are needed, and she agreed that it might have come to that.

“Since she is now a surgeon, I’m wondering if it is worse to have others see you in mismatched gloves or with strings attached. Neither would seem to inspire confidence.

“I think the best solution for her is to plan ahead and buy multiple pairs of identical gloves. Maybe a dozen pairs would do it.”

What is wrong with people?

Driving Division (responsorial) — leading to: The return of the Hat People

Dragonslayer of Oakdale: “Wednesday, The Cab Driver of South St. Paul asked if the other drivers he encounters on the road are aggressive or oblivious.

“I recalled my brother, who drives auto parts around the Cities and puts on 150 to 200 miles a day in that endeavor. He observed that at the front of any slow traffic, whether on the highway or in town, was ‘most always a Camry driver. Corollas seem to have the opposite effect.

“I have my own opinion of these people, but maybe it’s not so polite.”

BULLETIN BOARD SAYS: Get a hat!

Our theater of seasons

Including: Great comebacks

Anne Nonny Mouse: “I busted my daughter with a Christmas ‘Wreath Police’ notice I had cut out of the Bulletin Board. She told me I was too late; she had taken it down the week before.

“Then she told me she was busting ME. ‘What?! You can’t bust me! I take my wreath off the front door on January 2nd every year!’ (By January, it sheds needles all over my floor every time the front door is opened. It’s a constant reminder.)

“Daughter directed my attention to the fact that I replaced the wreath on the front door with a pair of skis that say ‘Let It Snow.’ OMG. I should have left the wreath up.

“The skis have since been removed.”

14,001 things to gripe about

Wednesday email from A Little Canadian: “Subject: Language complaint.

“Today’s front-page story about discrimination by the U of M against a women’s golf coach contained a verb-tense error that always sets my teeth on edge: ‘… the man who hired her essentially forced her to resign after he found out that she WAS a …’ (and here you can fill in a race, national origin, sexual preference, relationship to another — any of the things that traditionally have triggered discrimination). Just because one thing happened in the past, not everything in a sentence is past tense. People do not change things like race or national origin — and, although some believe that sexual preference can change, this story does not appear to involve discrimination about a past fact that was no longer true at the time of the discrimination. Maybe there would be less discrimination if we could all recognize and accept those things that cannot be changed.”

It just don’t add up!

The Hoot Owl of St. Paul: “Subject: Only a pedant…

“A perennial issue for some of us reared its head [Wednesday] in the Variety section of that ‘Other’ paper.

“Evidently the G.I. Joe doll is celebrating his birthday. The text beside the image reads ‘G.I. Joe … Born: 1964.’ But below that, in the seventh short paragraph, one sees the words ‘as G.I. Joe enters his fifth decade….’

“Whoa, Nelly! Did he not exist in his zero-to-10 decade? Shouldn’t the wording be ‘as G.I. Joe enters his SIXTH decade…’?

“Just wondering.”

BULLETIN BOARD SAYS: Yes. Sixth decade — though it hardly seems possible that 1964 was a full five decades ago.

“As the saying goes: ‘It’s been in all the papers’ — its being the opening of a new liquor store in Roseville. The number of newspaper pages devoted to the ‘GRAND OPENING’ has been substantial, but what captured my attention were the directions for finding the enterprise: ‘Next to Babies R’ Us.’ ”

Our times

Flash of Roseville: “Last week, I was entertained briefly by what I’d call a co-op commercial: A giant M&M interacted with the Geico gecko. I didn’t catch the sales pitch.

“A couple evenings later, I was half-paying attention to a commercial in which a round, reddish character was hurriedly leading a woman by her hand. I started remarking to my wife about the M&M-Geico ad, then noticed that the round being wasn’t wearing an M.

” ‘That’s an overactive bladder,’ she pointed out.”

Goodvertising

Today’s nominations come from Miss Kitty of the Midway: “Whenever commercials come on, we either fast-forward through them if they are recorded or hit the Mute button during regular broadcasts.

“However, there is a set of new commercials that we actually do not mute, or that we back up and watch. They are the ones for Maytag appliances, where the man is the appliance. We have seen the refrigerator, where he is complaining that the other appliances do not run all the time, calling the toaster lazy and dispensing ice through his hand. The dishwasher one has him sitting on the floor getting dirty dishes stacked on and around him. And the washer/dryer combination is great, when he hands back her cellphone and the dryer spins the clothes around.

“I always get a chuckle out of them and wonder if I have missed any others.”

The vision thing

Sue Dohnim: “Subject: Holey Moley!

“I have lots of moles on my skin. They look like freckles of various sizes and levels of darkness. I have talked to my doctor about them, in case they should indicate skin cancer. As long as they do not change and are round, I should just keep watching but not worry about them.

‘So today I looked down at my arm and saw a new light-colored mole that was not round but irregularly shaped. I wondered about it — not worrying, just wondering, thinking I should ask my doctor about it. I mentioned it to Little Ninja as I was reaching down to touch it, feeling for thickness.

“And I discovered that it is the best kind of mole ever: the kind that is made from a drop of caramel. Yum.”

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

More in Opinion

THE SHOWBOAT’S FUTURE Wanted: a management partner who will “creatively explore new programming and service opportunities” at a unique St. Paul riverfront facility. It’s the former Minnesota Centennial Showboat at Harriet Island Regional Park, and the city’s Parks and Recreation Department says its call for ideas is the “opportunity to re-imagine what this riverboat could be.” The department is seeking...

TEACHING USEFUL SKILLS Schools, are you listening? Joe Soucheray’s Dec. 1 column was brilliant. (“What’s next? Fancy signs in lunchrooms telling kids to chew?) Taking students with disciplinary problems and giving them a useful way to be productive, even teaching them a skill they could possibly use for future employment, is exactly what our schools should be doing. Snow and...

TRUMP’S NEXT CHAPTER Atticus Finch, the beloved father and lawyer in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” is one of literature’s most admirable characters, defending a black man accused of raping a white woman in a bigoted Southern town. But what has come to be considered Lee’s original manuscript, “Go Set a Watchman,” which was published in 2015 after lying...

Though the presidential campaign did not focus much attention on it, the federal debt confronting President-elect Donald Trump is greater, as a percentage of the economy, than at any time since Harry Truman’s World War II term of office. Trump more than Democrat Hillary Clinton did give lip service but few specifics about the size of the growing national debt...

The best way to solve the conundrum of 11 million undocumented immigrants who are living, working and contributing to America right now has a name: “245(i).” Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act is a law that enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress in its 13 years of existence. It is still on the books, though it expired in 2001...

St. Paul’s Right of Way (ROW) assessment program has certainly had a rough few months. First, nonprofits succeeded in getting the Minnesota Supreme Court to declare the assessment a tax subject to constitutional restrictions on taxing nonprofits. In a rare moment of ideological Kumbaya, conservative and progressive policy organizations joined hands to argue against it at the Supreme Court, as...